New Orleans spelling champ will take a second run at the national championship

While other teenagers spend their evenings after school playing video games or watching television, 14-year-old Tien Nguyen is reading the entire dictionary to maintain her status as a champion speller.

During a break from class at
Einstein Charter Middle School
May 10, Tien used her thumb and index finger to demonstrate the thickness of a single letter section in a dictionary. She's still working her way through words that start with A, but it's just one of the many approaches she's taken to become an expert speller.

Tien correctly spelled "
duende
" on March 18 to win the 29th annual New Orleans Spelling Bee at
Xavier University
for the second time. That earned her a spot at the national spelling tournament, which is celebrating its 90th year. She said she's "a little nervous" about the national competition, but excited.

"Going to D.C. is an opportunity that I probably won't have again because this is my last year [in middle school], so I want to make the most out of it," she said. Students in the national bee have to be in 8th grade or younger.

Tien said her parents are excited to go to D.C., and that she plans to show them several popular attractions. She previously visited the
White House
, the Abraham Lincoln Monument, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Her favorite attraction was the Washington National Cathedral, and she said she's excited to show her family the "breathtaking" and "iconic figures" from that church because of her family's Catholic background.

Tien's parents were unable to join her during her first trip to D.C. in 2015, when she qualified for the national tournament. She qualified that year by spelling "
schottische
" during the regional competition, where she defeated
246
other champions from 35 schools.

Although she lost the national competition that year, Tien said she's learned how to spell words like "urushiol" and "unction" to ensure that she won't misspell them again. She also studies pronunciations, definitions, root words, and the language of origin for words to determine which letter combinations work best to figure out a word's spelling.

It helps that Tien is good at memorizing, but she also seeks the advice of other spellers to improve. She said one of her peers advised her to study the prefix and suffix of words. She also focuses on her family's presence in the audience whenever she gets nervous during a tournament.

"It reminds me that I've studied hard and I should try my best," she said, drawing attention to how her parents supported after her mishap in 2015. "It didn't really matter how far I got, they were just proud of me that I was able to make it to the national competition."

While some of her competitors are the siblings of past spelling champions, Tien said she won her recent competition because of coaching from her sister. She also plans to take her time to ask more questions at the national competition, where she hopes to at least make it to the semifinals.

"I definitely have to do better this time because (my family) is going to be there. Now that I have experience from two years ago, I feel I'm going to make it to the semifinals this time," she said.

Tien was accepted into
Benjamin Franklin High School
in 2016, and she hopes to get enough scholarships to attend an out-of-state university or
Tulane University
. She said she wants to enter the medical field because she wants to "make a lot of money."

"Most of my family wants to be in the medical field but they didn't get a chance to, and I want to make them proud by being the first one [in the family]," she said.

Tien's English teacher, Trace Ragland, said Tien reads at a college level and has a "good chance" of winning the national competition. She said Tien is a generous person who often helps others.

"There's a lot of pressure on her, but I think she's got a good chance because they've all got pressure on them," Ragland said.

The
onstage rounds
of the Scripps National Spelling Bee begin May 31 and run through June 1. The preliminaries will stream online on
WatchESPN
May 31 from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. The finals will air on ESPN June 1 at 10 a.m., and part two of the finals will air on ESPN at 8:30 p.m.